Manage cross location orders with Square for Retail

About managing orders across locations

If you’re out of stock for an item at one location, you can easily fulfil it from another location to avoid losing out on a sale. While fulfiling the order for shipment or pickup, you’ll have full visibility into the inventory at your other locations to determine if you can fulfil the order successfully. Once created, the order will route to the selected location for fulfilment, and you can track the progress through the Orders section of your online Square Dashboard or Square for Retail app.

Before you begin

• If your items are split up across locations:
  Split fulfilment is not currently available with cross location orders or single location orders. While this feature may be available in the future, you must fulfil your customer’s items from one single location at this time. As a workaround, you can process separate orders for your customer if the items are stocked across multiple locations.

• If you currently use a courier (or alternate fulfilment method):
  The only accepted fulfilment methods for cross location orders are pickup and shipping. Delivery through a third-party courier service is not available at this time

• If your customer wants to pay later:
  At this time, the ability to provide payment for an order at a later date is not available for single location and cross location orders. Customers must pay for their items up front in order to successfully complete the order and either fulfil it at the location they’ve ordered from or send it to another location for fulfilment.

Create a cross location order

To create a cross location order:

1. Select an item to Add to Cart.

2. On the item details screen, select Pickup or Shipping as the fulfilment method. If you select Pickup, you can add a new or existing customer to the order or directly enter pickup information in the Details fields. If you select Shipping, you can add a new or existing customer to the order, or directly enter delivery information in the Shipping address fields.

3. When adding items to the cart, you can either: Select a specific item, and navigate to the item detail screen for it. Scroll down to the Location dropdown at the bottom of the fulfilment Details screens, and tap to select a new location. Tap the three dots at the top right of the cart, then tap Change Fulfilment Location. Tap the existing location dropdown to select a new location.

4. You can view inventory availability for the item(s) in your cart per location and filter by Distance, In stock, and Name.

5. Once the new fulfilment location has been chosen, tap Save to complete your changes. The new fulfilment location will now be reflected at the top of your cart.

6. Tap Charge to complete the order.

Once the order has been fulfiled at the appropriate location, the stock levels at the location where the item(s) were fulfiled will update accordingly. The location where the order was created will receive the sales data for the order, and the customer’s payment will be included in that location’s next transfer. The order details can be viewed in the sales reporting associated with said location.

Note: At this time, an entire order must be fulfiled from a single location with one fulfilment type. The ability to split fulfilment across multiple locations is not currently available.

Create a return for a cross location order

To start a return from the Retail POS app:

1. Search for the transaction by typing in a receipt number, scanning the receipt, or swiping the payment card.
2. If the transaction is not found, tap Select Location.
3. Select the specific location or All Locations.
4. Once you have located the transaction, you will have the option to return or exchange the items purchased.

Related articles

Review the following Support Center articles to optimize order management with Square for Retail:

• Cancel an order with Square for Retail

• Set up fulfilment types with Square for Retail

• Add your customer to a sale with the Square Retail POS app